Guild Wars 2

daimon.9876:

Add a Bookshelf to the Home Instance:

A place to store the various books of lore, letters, and such (e.g. E’s Correspondence, Collapse of the White Mantle, etc.) that are found all around the world.

I like getting these and reading them, but if I want to keep them, they just end up taking up space in my inventory. It would be great if there were a way to keep them and read them whenever I want, without having to use up inventory to use them.

I was coming here to suggest this exact thing too. Could be a gem store item to purchase maybe. I love all the tomes we’re compiling, but please give us somewhere dedicated to put them!

Sounds like a bunch of people in this thread don’t understand what ASAP means.

That’s “As Soon As Possible,” guys. It’s not “any minute now” or “presently” or “keep watching because the pot’s about to boil!” You not being able to tell the difference isn’t ANet’s fault. If you’re complaining about their communication it might be because you need to improve your reading comprehension.

Making alts and leveling them just to park them at a node farm to get what’s needed for a single basic mat? Kind of sounds like evidence of something being broken, doesn’kitten

We ran into pretty much the same exact bug that you are describing, OP. As far as I could tell, it’s just luck of the draw, but frustratingly you have to spend a lot of time and get pretty far in to the battle before you even learn if you’re going to be bugged out and unable to finish it.

For us, 4th try was the charm, but we basically walked away for a week because we were frustrated with it, then came back to give it a shot again and happened to get lucky and get through. Until they actually fix the bugs (who knows when that will be), I would suggest this—don’t keep trying to do it over and over back to back. It just gets too frustrating. Come back on a different day and try your luck again.

We haven’t unlocked music in our guild hall yet, but we’ve already been talking about how cool it would be if during festivals we could get festival/seasonal music to play in the guild hall. If we can put festival decorations up, it seems only fitting to be able to get the soundtrack to go along with them too.

A few weeks ago everyone was crashing constantly and there were huge long threads about it here. Then they fixed (or at least greatly improved) it and it was way more stable. But then with each successive patch since it’s been getting a little bit worse and worse again, at least in my experience (on mac client).

Hopefully it doesn’t have to get 100% broken again before they do whatever they did last time to address the issue.

I think the point is that, regardless of how many people there are in the guild, requiring TWENTY of any single mat that you gain by harvesting to refine ONE of a thing that is a basic component in a crafting discipline is exponentially higher than the ratio required for any other basic crafting material in the game.

The ratio of flax to linseed is totally out of whack. Whatever other changes are being made to scribing, that ratio can and should be fixed.

Astralporing.1957:

Maybe it’s a huge decrease in cost, but even now that cost is simply too great. Flax, dust, resonating slivers and pigments requirements for guildhall do need to be addressed. Either by reducing requirements, or by increasing supply.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. The fact that the price was completely astronomical before doesn’t change that it’s still too high now. The devs have acknowledged this.

I’m just suggesting that reducing the number of flax seed that need to go into one linseed oil would be a good way to reduce the sting of what currently feels like a really punishing grind needed to get something that’s functioning as a pretty basic material.

I know there’s plans to address the costs for scribe and guild hall decorations, but I don’t know if this change is on the table. Please though, anet, for the love of god, reduce the number of flax seed required to make one vial of linseed oil.

20 piles of flax seed for one vial is just too much. 10 or even 15 would be much more reasonable.

Our (small, 5 person) guild recently managed to get a guild hall and we know that being small the upgrades are going to take us a long time, but we’ve been managing to chip away.

Now though, we’re having to park all our alts at the flax node farms and spend all our time running around farming flax for linseed oil, and it’s still going at a snail’s pace, even with all of us pooling our resources. And looking ahead it doesn’t seem like matters are going to improve.

We’re just trying to build a workshop now, but then what? Vials of linseed oil are upwards of 80 silver each on the trading post and a basic finishing kit for scribe takes 6 of them. That’s just totally out of line. We shouldn’t be feeling discouraged with a whole crafting discipline before even unlocking it.

Same issue. Mac client, OS 10.10.1

Resets all of the following to default:
Field of view
Vertical position near & far
AoE loot on interact
Autoloot: autopickup
Enable first person camera
Adjust camera to character height
In game clocked is turned off

It happened first after Tuesday’s patch, then seemed better yesterday (I logged in and out several times), and now everything has reset to defaults again when I logged in today.

I’m getting this periodic bug where I spin round and round and cannot stop. This has happened on occasion for a long time, but lately has gotten much worse—it lasts longer and the spin is much faster.

Details:
- It tends to start during combat but will often persist after combat is done.
- It is sometimes accompanied by running which I can’t stop.
- I can back up and move sideways, but the moment I stop pressing my directional keys I continue spinning uncontrollably (sometimes I spin uncontrollably even while moving in other directions).
- I can still use my weapon and utility skills, can still res/interact, but the spinning doesn’t stop when I do.
- I’m running the game on the mac client (MacBook Pro, 15-inch, Mid 2014, OS 10.10.1).

On my partner’s screen it looks like my character is just turning around in a circle. On my screen the whole world appears to spin round and round like a top and it’s absolutely dizzying and miserable to look at. Someone please help.

My computer specs:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
OS 10.10.1

I can’t post crash logs because when I crash everything goes to white screen, no text, no nothing. For the most part with these crashes I can get to the finder and force quit the game, as opposed to having to hard restart. Sometimes the game just quits completely with no warning which mostly happens on loading screens: go to enter a new zone, suddenly I’m looking at my desktop with nothing running.

This has been happening on central Tyria maps and especially in Lion’s Arch. I’ve been avoiding HoT maps completely since the 11/17 patch.

Sepe.1463:

If you have a 64bit system, I highly recommend trying the 64bit client. Since HoT I was crashing 4-7 times a day with 32bit and now with 64bit client, no crashes at all. I also recommend to repair the client and delete the local.dat file. Doing these three steps fixed my crash-issues.

Yadda yadda yadda. If you read the thread it is full of people reporting crashes with the 64bit client.

Recommending people do something that they’ve already done and are reporting problems with while claiming it’s the solution to the problem they’re reporting is less than useless. It’s basically sticking your fingers in your ears and claiming to be listening.

Also constant crashes, also on mac client. Often seems to accompany trying to look at map view which appears with big black boxes or misaligned, then crash happens immediately.

Darkheron.6271:

Quells.2498:

Yeah as in there’s no risk and it makes ranged combat preferential. If you were the source of the abilities then you’d have to be able to move to targets whom are sometimes in very dangerous places which means you’ll need to have a strong build with adaptable play.

It doesn’t make it preferential it makes it optional. And fixing it to be centered on the player makes it less adaptable not more so. Honestly it’s the worst suggestion I have seen for the stance.

Yeah agreed. I don’t think that having the tablet automatically follow you around in combat or just be placed where you are is the solution. I think that the ground targeting and placement are as they should be for combat.

But I think that outside of combat just running around the open world, moving the tablet is awful. I really wish there was a way that it could toggle: when you leave combat and the tablet basically isn’t doing anything, it auto-follows you; when you enter combat you then have to manage its placement yourself.

I don’t know if there’s a functional way to make that work though, and I could imagine it creating lots of persnickety difficulties like in events where there are waves of enemies or whatnot.

karulegend.4960:

I really hope they don’t balance the tablet around zergs and PvE. Any small-scale engagement or even solo is going to show you just how horrible Ventari is right now compared to…well any of the other legends in general. It’s slow, clunky, small radius, long cast times, and high energy cost. Great concept, but needs a lot of tuning to be actually viable.

I agree with this tbh. I don’t think the tablet should be balanced around zergs but I feel like right now it really is. Running solo around the open world makes Ventari feel not just cumbersome but really pointless what with the grayed out utilities, etc.

So far, the places I’ve found the tablet to be useful are during things like Vinewrath (follow the siege carrier back and forth) and some of the world boss fights (Jormag for example). Those are pretty specific sorts of situations.

Imagine trying to do map completion with Ventari. It would be like an exercise in slow torture. So of course you’d swap to your other legend and just camp in that. What possible incentive is there to switch back when you have a grayed out utility bar?

I suppose people will say that then you should just change your build, lose the Salvation trait line and go with a different second legend…and a different gear set? …and at what point do we acknowledge that Ventari has such incredibly limited niche uses as to be dead weight 80% of the time?

notalent.4102:

I liked the rewarding playstyle of the tablet with the herald.

Part of my point exactly.

If we were trying to kitten Guardian as a class and every answer was “I really like Guardian with Dragonhunter,” we wouldn’t be giving or getting feedback on Guardian as its own class without its elite spec.

I’d say try playing Ventari on the Rev without playing Herald and see whether you have a different experience of it and different feedback.

Just wanting to add one more thing here: when I played Herald, I found that a lot of these issues seemed much less glaring, and I suspect that a lot of people are now playing Herald and testing Revenant with Herald not without it.

Yes, Herald fixes a lot. But Herald is not the base profession mechanic. It adds a whole additional thing on. And despite the fact that the attitude of most people right now is “well I’m just going to level to 80 instantly with tomes anyway,” the profession needs to be functional without its elite spec too.

So my feedback on Ventari here is based on deliberately playing Revenant this weekend without Herald. I played Herald last beta and it immediately pushed these issues from my mind. But the class needs to function well either with or without its elite spec. If it doesn’t, the elite spec isn’t a step up to the next level, it’s a requirement for fun and functional play.

No stance is just one slot skill, and no stance should only have one slot skill accessible to it.

Rev is built to give us very limited choice when it comes to utility skills to begin with. Our only option is to choose between legends, we cannot make selections of utility skills within a legend. Each legend only gets 1 healing, 3 utility, and 1 elite.

To compensate for that, we get to swap between 2 different lines of utilities when we swap between two different stances. That is the way the class is built.

You’re saying that one whole legendary stance should be “just a fallback”? Well, no. The class is built around having two stances to choose between and swapping back and forth as needed situationally.

Someone who is running Jalis and Shiro as their two stances has 10 slot skills at their disposal. Someone who is running Jalis and Ventari only has half that number unless they encumber themselves with the ground targeted movement requirement. It’s simply unbalanced, unrewarding, and it’s not fun.

I have no idea where you are getting the doom and gloom of “vile dark suffering” from the suggestion that, when the tablet is not out the centaur stance utility skills could have some alternate effects. At any rate, though, I think you needn’t worry since I doubt anyone will actually listen—it’s too late in the development process now and they’ve made it clear from the get go that when it comes to utilities we are stuck with the already meager pickings they have given us. (Seriously, compare the number of utility skills that exist for Rev (12) to the number of utility skills for every other class (20)!) I just think that choosing Ventari shouldn’t mean that you get even fewer utilities still.

Yes, people come and stand by the tablet when it’s out, and not necessarily because they need healing. Even outside of combat people stand by it. I’m pretty sure that’s just because it’s still a novelty, not a reflection of it having great functionality.

I admit to being an exclusive PVEr.

I think that the issue with the utilities being dead isn’t really about whether or not the tablet summon has a CD though.

If you were playing two other legends not including Ventari, then running around the open world you would have your 5 slot skills available on each one, and you would be able to swap between legends and gain access to any of those 10 total slot skills from the moment that you swap legends.

When Ventari is one of your legends, running around in open world you effectively only have access to half that number of slot skills, because you only gain access to your centaur stance skills when you are willing to have your movement encumbered by ground targeting.

So with Ventari you have to choose between being encumbered or having your utility skills disabled, and that feels far from enjoyable, mentally engaging, or rewarding. It’s just dull to play a level 80 character whose slot skills are grayed out the way that a level 10 character’s are.

Every beta weekend I have spent a chunk of time trying to work out a way to play Ventari that will be fun and engaging. I’ve tried different combinations of weapons and traits, different gear sets, etc. etc. because I really love the idea of Ventari and I enjoy playing support-based healing characters. At this point though it feels like there’s nothing but my stubborn determination to keep me playing it. It’s not rewarding for open world play, it feels cumbersome and largely disabled (and disabling) 80% of the time.

Running around in the open world obviously means running across distances on the map. On a Revenant with Ventari, that means one of three things: 1) either you don’t have the tablet out, in which case you don’t have access to any utility skills; 2) you do have the tablet out, in which case you’re in the unenviable position of effectively having to ground target your own movement in chunks of <1500; or 3) …you just aren’t actually in legendary centaur stance at all while running around.

IMO, having to make that choice of either not having access to any utility skills or having to effectively ground target your own movement is a major impediment to enjoyable use of Ventari in the open world.

As a fix, I would suggest that the legendary centaur stance utility skills toggle to a different effect when the tablet is not out rather than simply being grayed out completely. For example one of them could grant swiftness (perhaps only to oneself) when the tablet is not in the world; let another one blind nearby foes. These need not be really major effects, but they ought to be something, not just grayed out all the time.

Also, as things stand now, we have the rather bizarre situation where a healing spec on the Revenant, in a game where every class has the ability to self-heal, actually lacks an initial self-heal!

In order to heal oneself with Ventari, you have to project the tablet into the world and then use Natural Harmony with its 2 second delay. Considering that running around in centaur stance is so hugely de-incentivized by all the utility skills being grayed out, in practice you probably have to 1) switch TO centaur stance, THEN 2) project the tablet into the world, and 3) use Natural Harmony. That’s more cumbersome than anything any other class needs to do to heal itself.

Projecting the tablet into the world simply ought to have an initial self heal.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that with every passing beta weekend there are less tablets around. People try it out and move on and I think that’s a reflection of the fact that it just isn’t fun. Playing it with Herald absolutely does help address some of these issues, but if an elite spec is necessary to make another spec functional then that ought to indicate that there’s a flaw. The Ventari legend ought to be fun and playable even without playing Herald and right now it’s just not.

I think all of these issues with Ventari are compounded by the fact that healing is simply not rewarded in the game right now. Game rewards scale off of damage. (I’d love to see participation in events be calculated off either damage or healing as a way to reward playing healers, but that’s another topic.) But it’s exactly because healing is so unrewarded that Ventari deserves some functional utility skills to make it worth playing in the open world.

shadow.6174:

Sytherek.7689:

- The DC issue is getting worse on some systems. It is not always our internet connections.

Yeah, I know right? :S I’m struggling with it for some time now (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Wth-Constants-disconnects-and-losing-credit)

In my case, I KNOW it is not my internet connection because my partner is sitting right next to me playing at the same time and not getting DC’d. I play on a Mac, he plays on a PC. I have always had more DC issues than him, but they have been exponentially worse since the Sept 4 beta weekend.

My single biggest recommendation to Anet not just for this event but for the game overall is to TAKE THE INCREASE IN DC’s SERIOUSLY AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Something has happened in the past two weeks. It needs to be looked into and sorted out because it doesn’t matter how good your content is if you have a client that is unstable, frequently crashing, or regularly DC’ing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We are aware of an issue where if you disconnect during the event you will not be able to rejoin. If you experience this, you will be able to participate in the events that follow the one from which you disconnected. For instance, if you were disconnected during the Kessex Hills incursion, you’ll be able to get into the next stage when it takes place in Diessa Plateau.

Sorry but…so what? Who cares? There’s no carry over from one map to the next. It’s like saying “well, if you’re doing world bosses and you get DC’d you can always go and do the next world boss.” Yes, of course you can, but how would that answer an issue of consistently not getting rewards for content completed?

At this point I have been DC’d from more event maps—all with 4-5 minutes left to go in the event, and all with a crash that has required a total reboot of my computer—than I have been able to complete. I do a string of all three maps and I am lucky if I get rewards for even ONE of them. I am so frustrated I could scream. I started this event really excited to get some skins that haven’t been available since I began playing the game, and I know that I should be able to buy them already, given how many stacks and how many event maps I’ve been through, but I’m not even half way to being able to get one of them.

So when you say “you can just go do the next event” it just sounds to me like you’re avoiding a real acknowledgement of the issue and how it’s impacting people.

Very simply, this event could be massively improved simply by giving people a reward chest (like in SW) for every incursion event that they complete as they complete it, and then at the end of the half hour, giving them a bonus chest based on the number of stacks they have amassed.

Yes, people might still lose out if they get DC’d (something that keeps happening to me worse now than ever), but we wouldn’t be losing out on EVERYTHING, so it wouldn’t feel nearly as punishing as it does now.

Timing wise, it would be far better to have a 10 min break at the top of the hour, 20 min of active events, map switch/another 10 min break at the bottom of the hour, another 20 min of active events, etc. Then you could have a half hour break after every cycle through the three maps.

I appreciate wanting to make the top tier rewards difficult to get. I don’t actually see that as a problem. But people should be rewarded for completing events, not just tagging mobs, running off, and playing selfishly. Spreading out the pacing with which rewards are allocated would make a huge improvement and probably improve the tone on event maps, which is really tense and resentful right now.

Just hang around map chat for a brief while and you’ll see how clear it is that very few people are having fun. Personally, I am seriously thinking that I might really want to not play the game this weekend at all.

And again, same thing in Brisban Wildlands. DC’d with seven stacks, got another three on reconnect. No rewards. Really unhappy.

Diessa Plateau, DC’d with 9 stacks and less than 4 min to go in the event. Couldn’t get back on. Game crashed, computer crashed (this happens all the time and I have raised this issue before about connection and stability issues which seem to be specific to the Mac client—guess Anet doesn’t care?) Of course got no reward for the event.

My partner was on the same map, relogged with 5 stacks because of lag, lost them all, got another 6 by the end of the event and got no reward either.

Whoever devised this system for rewards did a really bad job. Just terrible. It’s set up to punish you if you have even a blip of connectivity issues. Really disappointing. We were both excited for this and willing to be patient while rewards were glitched yesterday, but this just feels like scrambling to get to incursions while they are up and getting nothing for it. It’s not fun at all, just stressful.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Facet-of-Nature-HELP/first#post5454638

Thanks! Good to know that that half of the trouble is a known issue already.

Experiencing two issues with the beta right off the bat.

Firstly, I play the game on a mac and I am constantly getting DCed (every 5-10 minutes or so) with a “Network Error code=3032:1002:3:3078:101” which asks me to please check my internet connections and try again. My partner is sitting right next to me playing the game on a PC and he is not getting DCed. Clearly the issue is not with our internet connection or it would be happening to us both, so I presume this is a problem with the Mac client.

Secondly, on the Herald, Facet of Nature does not appear at all for me in general PVE (I have been on three different maps.) When I went through the PVP lobby, however, it suddenly appeared for the first time…and disappeared again when I went out into Lion’s Arch.

Could we get a Lion’s Arch Wayback Stone. Something like the HoM Portal Stone but it takes you to a full instance of old Lion’s Arch (before Scarlet’s attack)?

We can already visit parts of the old city in some personal story steps. Please can we have an item that lets us access the whole thing.

In Dry Top during sandstorms, a shadowed box appears around the tablet when you move it. A shadowed box also appears when using certain weapon skills. I noticed it especially on mace 3, but I think it’s there for some others too.

Because please please, you are going to give us the ability to choose which utility skills we use in each stance, right Anet?

I really want to like the Ventari legend, but right now it feels a lot like I’m just lugging a big stone slab around. I want to feel like it’s worth while to actually go through the effort of keeping the tablet out and moving it with me.

So how about a utility skill with a mechanic similar to mesmer mantras: you cast it and then it has a few (2? 3?) charges.

The effect: the next (2, 3, whatever) times you move the tablet into an enemy, it stuns them for 1 sec.

I mean come on, I just smacked that risen with Ventari’s tablet and they didn’t even notice?

I don’t have specific skill suggestions for the other legends yet, maybe others do, but if we could please have just a couple of more utility skills like this for each legend and get to select which ones we are running, it would allow us to make some meaningful choices, and it would stop every rev who’s using legend x or y from being a redundant clone of every other rev using that same legend (which, let’s face it, is how it feels now, especially given how none of the traits feel especially build defining).

I really agree with the OP.

The idea of stat conversion upon switching stances is really interesting, and I also think that a weapon swap would go a long long way.

But I think one incredibly helpful thing would be to add a choice of utility skills for each stance so that we can select which three we will use and not always have to have only the same ones regardless of how/what/where/with whom we’re playing. Give us some real choices to make!

Right now playing rev feels a bit like playing a pre-made deck of a ccg (think like Magic the Gathering or whatnot). Okay, so you have two pre-made decks and you can swap between one and the other for “variety,” but you aren’t getting to make any internal decisions about what is in each deck.

I don’t think it would require a whole load of new utilities, but give us like two more utility skills per stance to choose from or something? Please?

Perhaps this would also help to make up for what feel like very lackluster traits—regardless of what I have tried, nothing feels build defining, and nothing feels like it has interesting synergy across any two stances. It all just feels bland bland bland. But that might be another issue all together.

Visual bug (not sure if it’s been mentioned already):

When using a flamethrower, if you go to mine ore/chop trees/etc. the animation shows you chopping/mining with your flamethrower and not with your gathering tools.

I just think there could be a balance where soloable doesn’t have to mean totally without challenge. I mean there are some personal story steps earlier on that provided more of a challenge than this.

I did actually poke my nose into the original version of Victory of Death with the same friend who I completed it with tonight. And we very quickly found that we just couldn’t get beyond the first room, so we gave up. I agree with people who said that you ought to be able to do it without a full party. But I think there ought to be a middle ground. Soloable should not mean snoozefest.

Compared to the Claw Island battles, for example, the final story step right now is a joke.

I don’t know how many others have played through the revised Victory or Death story step. I’ve not seen much discussion of it, so I’m curious to hear others’ experience.

I’ve been eagerly waiting for the changes to come out so that it could be done without a full party. I played through it today with one other party member, and I’m a little disappointed because it was so easy that it didn’t present any kind of challenge at all.

In fact the biggest challenge of the whole thing was trying to get to read the NPCs dialog. At the start of the Ruined City of Arah section, you can’t read through what the Destiny’s Edge members have to say without them running off mid-way through to fight the risen that keep spawning.

All three of the champions at that point die so quickly and easily that I was just asking “Is that it?” And probably because of that Logan’s big self-sacrificing moment felt really lackluster.

The fight on the airship seems like it’s supposed to start with the Destiny’s Edge members mourning Logan’s apparent death—at least I think that’s supposed to be the emotional weight in the story telling. I’m not sure though because by the time I got to them in the airship and tried to read their dialog, I was having to run to the other end of the ship for the next bit of combat.

The battle on the deck of the airship was marginally more satisfying. I felt like I had to at least pay attention and I can see how it would present a challenge if you were indeed playing it solo, so I have no big complaints there. But imo the Arah part and the landing pad part (which was so easy that I almost forgot it even happened) really need some adjusting.

I never played the story step in its original version, so this is just my opinion, based on going in with no prior knowledge. But to be clear, I am not complaining about the shooting down Zhaitan with cannons portion. I felt like that was pretty well done, actually (I know that will be a minority opinion).

I also know that not everyone cares about what the NPCs have to say, but after having followed the story of Destiny’s Edge from the Edge of Destiny novel all the way through the personal story, I feel like I should get a chance in the instance to read their dialog about one of their members’ seeming deaths if I want to.

A suggestion to do with Hero Points and peoples’ complaints about them having been spent in ways they don’t want (especially for mid-level characters):

How about a one time use only option to refund all hero points?

So you auto-allocate builds for the reasons you stated, but you also give people the single use choice to reject that allocation. This would let people who are unhappy with what they’ve got (which, let’s be honest, in practice often replicates what they had only very imperfectly) make the decision for themselves without breaking the whole system of spending the points only once. And it lets those players who’ve been away for a long time still hop right in and play their characters from the moment they log on.

OP (and others having this issue), if you are still struggling perhaps this will help.

Traits now work sort of like skills used to in that you have to learn (unlock) them first, and after you have done so you can swap between them freely (or at least swap between trait lines, of which you can choose three).

The confusing thing is that you unlock/learn everything, both traits and skills, in a different panel than you use to select the traits that you are going to use at any time.

The panel for unlocking and learning traits/skills is one below the trait icon that you’re used to seeing. That new icon you’ve never seen before is the one that lets you learn the traits. Do that first and then go back to the trait panel to select the ones you want.

You should have enough Hero Points to unlock everything, so go ahead and do that all in one go. Then you never have to worry about it again and can swap your traits whenever you like.

Another thank you, ANet. This was a very classy move and very well executed, especially because it’s not heavy handed and not preachy. Small gestures like this go a long way in making people feel acknowledged, and in allowing them to feel like stories which have personal resonance for them have a place in the game world.

Chrono.6928:

i don’t really get it… nothing against the lgbt community, have several friends who are, and legally i think they should have more rights, but why the need to put hot topic issues in a fantasy video game? In a game about unity and fighting dragons just seems like a good way to stirr up controversy and have more religion debates in trade chat and can see otherwise good people who just happen to have a religious belief getting banned just for having a discussion (even if in a polite/friendly manner)

why not put obama or hillary flyers up, or crosses or other religious symbols ingame too? Thought the whole point of a fantasy video game was to escape reality.

bunny trail but… why do voters even care about social issues atm when we are billions or trillions in debt atm in the usa. everything else seems kind of irrelevant in comparison to the giant problem that isn’t going away.

again (just to make it clear and i dont get banned for even posting this lol) i support the agenda, but I don’t get the need for it in a game. let the politicians and preachers fight in real life, ingame i just want to fight dragons and talk in trade chat without debates.

The inclusion of this NPC has zero to do with any “hot topic issue,” unless you believe it is up to you to debate whether transgender people do or don’t exist. And let me tell you, bud, that ain’t up to you! We exist regardless of your opinions on the matter!

Regardless, this NPC has nothing at all to do with any discussion of people’s real world legal rights or other real world issues. It is simply a fact of life that gender variant and gender non-normative people are a part of the real world (and they are not at all a modern or Anglo-European invention either, btw). It should be zero skin off of your nose that an aspect of human diversity be acknowledged as part of a game world. And if you feel that it is some skin off your nose then I think you have to face the fact that that’s nothing but ignorance and prejudice.

Another thank you, ANet—thank you for listening and for responding. For me this response breeds a tremendous amount of good will and faith. (And I’m a skeptic who rarely has faith in any company.)

My partner and I both bought the Ultimate edition as soon as we saw the blog post, and we both felt genuinely relieved by your response, good about our purchase, and able to return to feeling excited for HoT!

Yes OP, I agree. And all these responses telling people how they can get character slots or how the character slot issue shouldn’t matter to them are just stubbornly trying to dismiss an issue that many many people are bringing up.

If $50 is too much for the expansion (and whether or not any one person believes it is, many people are talking about that number and many people do feel so) then $60 is definitely too much. $60 is a real number, and no one can make it go away just by sheer stubborn shoving their fingers in their ears or trying to drown it out by shouting people down, no matter how much they want to shut down people having a conversation about it.

Leo G.4501:

Interesting. The thing is, I’m on your side. The only thing I try to do is try to keep people in perspective. I want the price of HoT to come down too, but I don’t want the price to drop to be taken as a victory for the mass of posters having a hissy-fit on the forums. I want the price to come down because Anet understands that the content in it isn’t expansive enough to warrant the price tag (although they could also just put more stuff in it or discuss with us the future and timeline of additions for updates).

If I’m the one causing negativity and resentment in the community, then what do you think the people crying about quitting the game, calling Anet crooks and money grubbers is accomplishing? So me being polite, civil and objective is negative but people whining and being kitten are positive? I’m not even calling people out on their BS arguments, I’m trying to offer compromise and discussion. I could be far more negative than I am since the whole debacle is mostly a clusterkitten of whining about what new players get that you don’t but I’M NOT.

As for the rest of your post, I will refrain from speaking specifically to your or your goals. I’m just expressing my opinion, mostly. But I’ll conclude by saying, bringing up an old statement from a manifesto while misinterpreting it is only going to bear negativity and arguments. It’s the foundation of most of the whole issue with the cost of HoT and is the basis of what alot of these fruitless internet ranting stems from. Say what you will, but I’d refrain from shanking a fellow dissatisfied customer in the kidney with your remarks. The activity of business is cut-throat enough without customers turning on each other even more.

Honestly, it’s not my intention to shank you or create more tension. You’ve just happened to hit a spot that’s been made very sore in all of this kerfuffle, and maybe that’s the point. From my perspective, much of the negativity is coming from the number of comments from people glibly saying “just delete a character to free up a slot or buy one for gold, it’s no big deal, just shut up about it!” I do appreciate that you have not directly said “it’s no big deal, just shut up about it,” but that sentiment now feels implicit in being told that if I played in X, Y, or Z ways the issue would disappear. (It wouldn’t, of course, the issue still exists even if it’s more easily managed by some people than by others.)

Frankly, there is no time when being told “X amount isn’t that much” isn’t going to cause bad blood, and that’s the case whether someone’s saying “$10 isn’t that much” or “150 gold isn’t that much” or “$50 isn’t that much,” because those are all relative and subjective statements. All of them are going to make people whose means are lower feel very slighted, dismissed, and judged.

Of course people calling ANet names and throwing angry fits aren’t being positive! But from my perspective the attitude of “ugh, just delete a character or buy a slot with gold!” is the equal serving of negativity from the other side. (See, for example, the comment immediately above this one.) And whether or not you agree with my interpretation, I do think that ANet’s statements about honoring effort put into characters at the HoT announcement contravene the expectation that anyone go back to zero with characters/their account in order to continue their progression in the expansion.

Sad Swordfish.9743:

You are completely wrong. God job on accusing me of “grinding dungeons” or telling you to play the game a certain way. It’s clear as day that you are not interested in listening to reasons, ankitten ot open to alternatives.

You can easily get the gold needed by not grinding, and just playing and having a good time. It’s telling that you are so fanatic about your own ways instead of listening to veterans who have more experience than you and who want to help you. Instead you shoot people down, accuse them with a hostile victimized toxic tone.

That reply wasn’t to a comment of yours? Unless you’re here on two different accounts, I guess.

But for the record, I listen to veterans who I know and who know me, and whose advice I therefore trust (because not all advice is good). I happen to live with a veteran player who has been playing GW2 since its pre-launch beta weekends and who played GW1 before that. I evaluate suggestions and take advice from people who say convincing things and whose advice seems sound. And you, sir or madam, simply have not said things that put you in that category.

Ohoni.6057:

By ANet’s own words, then, spoken in the spirit of their original game manifesto, they wanted to honor the time and effort players have put into their characters thus far, even as the expansion was released. Asking anyone to delete a character in order to gain access to the expansion’s offerings obviously flies directly in the face of that.

But you don’t have to delete any characters. That is an option, but far from the only option. You can also buy a new slot with cash of gold. And don’t come back with “but I don’t want to buy a slot,” because that just takes the argument into circles.

I won’t come back with “but I don’t want to buy a slot with gold.” I will come back with “I don’t have that much gold.” That would represent 90% of the gold I have managed to get in the entire time I have been playing (which is about 6 months). And you can bet that there are plenty of people who’ve started playing since the start of this year whose gold is less than mine.

You are trying to wiggle away from the fact that the price it costs to gain equal access to the content of the expansion comes out gated at a $10 higher for some players than for others, and that that is an in-built inequity in value for money. Telling people that there are ways they ought to work around that inequity, trying to trivialize it, or suggest it should be ignored/doesn’t matter is just sticking your fingers in your ears and trying to avoid the issue.

Leo G.4501:

hibari.9836:

Sad Swordfish.9743:

hibari.9836:

Smitten.3076:

Some of us truly have no idea why not getting a character slot/gems is an issue.

snip

He is not referring to deleting a character. He is saying why are you ignoring the option you have of simply converting 140-150 gold to 800 gems and buy your character slot with no real money? Nothing about that is unreasonable.

I’ve been playing this game for about six months. 140-150 gold represents 90% of the gold I have managed to get during the entire time that I have been playing the game!

Does that sound to you like it in any way honors the time and effort someone like me has put in? Please do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you’ve been playing the game for years or do frequent dungeon runs or because your coffers are full for whatever reason that 140-150 gold is a small or easy number for all of us. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone does (or should) play the same way that you do.

For many many players who’ve come to the franchise in the past few months—just long enough to start to get really invested in the game but not long enough that we’ve got cred as vets—that’s a big number. And we are really not the people you should be looking to alienate in this conversation.

There’s many ways of obtaining gold. Once you play for a while, you start to have less and less things to spend gold on and you have to find ways to waste your gold. I know, when I was playing the game, I ended up wasting lots of gold on crafting. I still sometimes burn gold on crafting but I can also make gold through crafting.

If 150 gold is 90% of your entire income up to your 6 months of playing, it only gets worse and you only get more gold as time progresses…there’s always things in the game that straight up give you gems…

But all that aside, lots of people complain about grinding and while I can understand that it can suck, the thing is you can do so doing things you find fun. You can WvW, PvP or just explore the world and get gold. Putting a goal up for yourself is, like, the only thing there is in the current game that gives playing a purpose. Playing for a purpose helps motivate but despite that, playing for a purpose doesn’t have to be un-fun.

I’ll tell you now, if you set your goal to buy a character slot with in-game gold, it won’t take you that long and will feel like some sort of accomplishment to feel more happy about in the long run.

Let me reiterate since it did not come across the first time: Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone does (or should) play the same way that you do. Also, please do not be condescending. Please do not try to tell me how to have fun or what my in-game goals or play style should be.

When I said that this is creating resentment and negativity in the community: congratulations! You are doing it! Whether or not you intend to, it is what you are doing right now with a comment like this!

I have a very clear sense of my in-game goals, thanks. I already have things that I am working towards (like full crafted sets of exotics for all of my characters—some of whom, I might add, I am still leveling or only just now got to 80—Mawdrey, particular bits of ascended gear, Vision of the Mists, etc. etc.). I don’t need you to tell me to play for a purpose.

But what you are really telling me is play for the purpose I think you should be playing for, not that you think you should be playing for.

And you know what, all this (as well as your earlier dismissive comments on the topic of grinding) aside, what ANet promised for GW2 from the point of their original manifesto was a no-grind philosophy. (See Colin Johanson’s “I swung a sword” dialog in the manifesto trailer.) The fact that you want to disregard that and tell players to grind like it’s a fact of life does not actually trump what the devs have promised this game to be. Sorry if I don’t think that your voice trumps theirs.

Sad Swordfish.9743:

hibari.9836:

Smitten.3076:

Some of us truly have no idea why not getting a character slot/gems is an issue.

snip

He is not referring to deleting a character. He is saying why are you ignoring the option you have of simply converting 140-150 gold to 800 gems and buy your character slot with no real money? Nothing about that is unreasonable.

I’ve been playing this game for about six months. 140-150 gold represents 90% of the gold I have managed to get during the entire time that I have been playing the game!

Does that sound to you like it in any way honors the time and effort someone like me has put in? Please do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you’ve been playing the game for years or do frequent dungeon runs or because your coffers are full for whatever reason that 140-150 gold is a small or easy number for all of us. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone does (or should) play the same way that you do.

For many many players who’ve come to the franchise in the past few months—just long enough to start to get really invested in the game but not long enough that we’ve got cred as vets—that’s a big number. And we are really not the people you should be looking to alienate in this conversation.

Ohoni.6057:

So if you pay for the expansion, then you are entitled to get use of the expansion without needing to pay an additional $10 on top of its sticker price to buy the character slot that will let you gain access to the new profession which is a substantial element of its advertised content.

No, you are not.

You are entitled to the ability to roll a Revenent into any character slots you may have available, just as you were able to roll any of the original eight classes into any slot you had available. You are NOT entitled to a free slot to put that character into, unless ANet says that you are.

So according to you, everyone is entitled to get what they paid for…except for some people who should pay an inflated price to gain access to the same thing. Riiiiiiight. Well you’ve sure convinced me.

Smitten.3076:

Some of us truly have no idea why not getting a character slot/gems is an issue.

Whatever your opinion on deleting characters to make new ones, you must remember that that is a totally subjective matter that is going to feel like a much bigger slight to some people who care about the characters they have made in different ways than you might. (For those who do some roleplay, for example, characters make up individual elements of ongoing stories about which they care deeply.)

What’s factually true, however, is that ANet promised something to players at the PAX South announcement of HoT. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxLkfXwxLTs from about 16 minutes in). Within the first minutes of the announcement, Mike O’Brien had said that they did not want to produce an expansion that “invalidates all the work that you’ve put in to your existing characters” by forcing anyone to grind for higher level gear or to reach a raised level cap.

By ANet’s own words, then, spoken in the spirit of their original game manifesto, they wanted to honor the time and effort players have put into their characters thus far, even as the expansion was released. Asking anyone to delete a character in order to gain access to the expansion’s offerings obviously flies directly in the face of that.

And frankly, I think that seeing that suggestion glibly thrown around by some players is doing a tremendous amount to undermine the sense of friendliness and good will in the community—it creates bitterness and anger between us all by making it seem that some players want others to sacrifice their effort, time, and imaginative/emotional energies, while not acknowledging that they themselves would be outraged if it was suggested that they deleted something from their accounts that they had worked hard for and cared about.

If you want to understand why not getting a character slot is such a big deal, then think about some element of your account that you’ve worked hard to get and really care about, and think about how you would feel if it was suggested that you should have it stripped from your account and that you were acting “too entitled” if that upset you or you said it was unfair.

Excellent post, OP. Spot on.

Ohoni.6057:

As a player, you are entitled to get exactly what you paid for. If you paid for the core game, you are entitled to the core game. If you paid for gems and bought things with those gems, you are entitled to the things that you bought with those gems. If you buy the HoT base kit at $50, you are entitled to the things listed in that base kit.

Nothing more.

And ironically, yes. Despite what this person is intending to argue, they are right. We are entitled to get exactly what we paid for.

So if you pay for the expansion, then you are entitled to get use of the expansion without needing to pay an additional $10 on top of its sticker price to buy the character slot that will let you gain access to the new profession which is a substantial element of its advertised content.